


The Devil Went Down to Vormir

by VigsFest



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Natasha Romanov, Gen, Pepper is Peter Potts, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Toni Stark has a heart, Tony is Toni, no violins were harmed in the writing of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 03:09:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigsFest/pseuds/VigsFest
Summary: Needing time to steady her breathing, she looked around. There was no blood on the ground. Either it disappeared, or…the wind shifted again, pushing. “The cliff, huh? You drive them over the cliff?”“I don’t drive anything,” the creature said, raising his hands as if to show he couldn’t hold a steering wheel. “What you seek—”“What do I seek?” she challenged him now.“The same as everyone, you seek the Soul Stone, daughter of Howard.”“But what if,” she pulled her hand out of her pocket, “I already have it?”After the Time Heist Gone Wrong, Toni Stark went to Vormir herself, not because she was "leaning in" but because Howard once told her she should become a lawyer, since no argument was ever safe from her.





	The Devil Went Down to Vormir

_“Clint, where’s Nat?”___  


Her eyes had gone automatically to Steve. Toni heard the thud of Clint’s knees hitting the dais before she could turn her head. Beside her, Steve went pale and frozen.  


The empty space pulled at her like a magnet, but her eyes locked on Nebula across the platform. _“He went to Vormir with Gamora. He returned with the Soul Stone, and no Gamora,” she’d told Quill on Titan._ And only now, five fucking years later, did she remember that tidbit about Vormir.__  


_No. Not like this,_ she thought. _This isn’t the end. The end will be when they face Thanos again. Not now. It isn’t the end because it doesn’t look like the end. Though it does sound like it._____  


Steve was reaching, everyone was reaching for Clint, arms extended, suits retracting, wrists gleaming… The plan formed in an instant.  


She helped Scott haul Clint to his feet. “Get him to the sofa,” she said gently, pushing them just a bit to ensure everyone’s eyes followed the two men. She turned as she sensed Steve stepping up behind her. She placed a gloved hand on the captain’s arm, only to watch a tear splash on it. She squeezed for a moment, giving him a chance to compose himself, actually feeling the work, the shudder, run through him. _I can use this,_ she thought, and hated herself for it at the same time. “Steve,” she looked up at him now and saw a man drowning in sorrow. She shook his arm a bit, and he tried to focus on her. “Steve, we have to get him someplace warm, he’s going in to shock.”__  


She watched as he almost said “We all are,” but he was stronger than that. An action gave him something to do, and he straightened, gripping her hand first, before removing it. Letting it drift against his side was only natural. That it also brushed against Thor as he stumbled over was a minute gesture.  


They were clustered around Clint now, Bruce looking less green, more human, and more on the verge of losing a different kind of control. Steve had a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, Thor in all his newfound clumsiness standing between the rest of them and the platform.  


“Friday,” she whispered. “Activate Project HAH.”  


Steve was just turning, damn his enhanced hearing, but he was too late, she was too fast. Stepping onto a power circle, she put the stones in her pocket and raised the clicker. “I’ll be right back,” she said, not meeting his eyes.  


_“Toni!”___

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _And she was on another planet, deep in the purple shadow of a mountain outlined with the fiery sunset—or was it sunrise—of a distant sun. Vormir._  


A white light hovered around the mountaintop, and if there had been a neon arrow, it couldn’t be clearer that was her destination.  
Because the two tracks of footprints before her led her that way too.  


“Fuck that,” she said out loud, and engaged her booster.  


She had no idea how long it had taken Clint and Natasha to hike up the mountain. Obviously there was an intention there, to make the penitent ponder and worry and wonder, heightening every feeling. But she didn’t have time for theater, or the ringmaster.  


“Everyone who—”  


“I’m here for the stone,” she said, trying not to step back in fear. The dude was floating, floating. Yes, she’d flown up here, but her rockets were visible. They made sense.  


“That which you seek lies this way….” was his unperturbed response, as he indicated a path through the cliff face, toward the white lights.  


“Friday?” There was no response. She was on her own.  


They exited a short tunnel and the view was spectacular, if she had time for such things. The wind was sharper on the cliff, almost pushing her to the edge, but she grounded herself.  


The creature beckoned her forward.  


“Nope, I’m good.”  


He came closer now, and she smelled…well, rot and death and decay. No surprise there.  


Needing time to steady her breathing, she looked around. There was no blood on the ground. Either it disappeared, or…the wind shifted again, pushing. “The cliff, huh? You drive them over the cliff?”  


“I don’t drive anything,” the creature said, raising his hands as if to show he couldn’t hold a steering wheel. “What you seek—”  


“What do I seek?” she challenged him now.  


“The same as everyone, you seek the Soul Stone, daughter of Howard.”  


“But what if,” she pulled her hand out of her pocket, “I already have it?”  


The creature reeled back and the force of his aura, wind, whatever, almost pulled her with him. Or did she want to hold it in his face and push him over the cliff? _All options were on the table. A good place to start.___  


The wind seemed to shriek, and the air turned colder, biting now.  


“Huh,” she said, calmer than she felt, as she put the stone back in her pocket. “I guess no one ever actually brought the stone to Vormir before.”  


The creature hovered near the edge of the cliff, and if he had been diffuse before, he was positively scattered now, the blurred edges of his being stretching almost the width of outcropping.  


Toni stepped to the side, where a small jumble of rocks provided a handy seat. She could see footprints here, and imagined Clint and Natasha sitting, hashing it out. At least she hoped they had. She didn’t want to imagine the violence of a fight. _Though,_ she reassured herself quickly, _knowing them, they fought to be the one to jump. Crazy kids._ Shaking her head, she sat down._  
___

__“Okay, now we negotiate.”__

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _The number one rule of negotiation according to Toni Stark: Know what you really want. The number two rule: Know what you’re willing to give up to get it. Number three: Surprise them. Number four? She had never had to figure that one out._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _It took a while and a lot of silence—human silence, the shrieking wind went on forever and she wondered if there were other, less visible spirits here—before the creature gathered himself enough to be visible again. It drifted to a point opposite her, backed against a cliff wall, but its attention was fully on her pocket._  


Eventually, she sighed and snapped, “Up here, ghoulface.” Not her best. _Circumstances.___  


“If you think to use the other stone to trick me,” it finally said, nodding at her waist, “know that it won’t work on me.”  


She took the Reality stone out of her other pocket. “You’re tied to the Soul stone, huh? Makes you immune to the others?”  


He didn’t answer. She thought it through. “I could reverse Reality to bring her back. I could bring the Time stone here and undo whatever you did.”  


“I didn’t do anything. They chose.”  


“A choice you made them take.”  


“They understood the choice. They made the choice. The Soul stone—”  


“Yeah yeah. ‘A soul for a soul,’ right?”  


“Are you prepared to choose?”  


She shook her head. “I came alone. There is no choice.”  


“Do you think yourself the first seeker to come alone?”  


She looked around, then back at him. “Uh, yeah, I do. What’s the contract say about that?”  


“There is no contract,” he intoned pompously. “There is only—”  


“Please, drop the script. And the theatrical tone. Let’s just talk.”  


“You will not deter me, or trick me, daughter of Maria,” he admonished her, floating closer and higher.  


_Oh goody, another negotiating trick? Make me look up at him? Please. Next he'll start spreading....___  
She leaned back on her hands, moving them farther from her pockets, thrusting her hip forward a bit, just watch him retreat. Nice. Every time.  


“Okay, so what happens when a solo traveler gets caught in your web? How do they trade their life for something they can’t use afterward?”  


“Usually they leave, frustrated.” His honesty caught her by surprise and she barked out a laugh.  


“And the others? The un-frustrated ones?”  


He was silent, floating back and forth from the edge of the cliff to mouth of the cave. Not agitated. Pacing?  


“They do not claim the prize,” was all he said.  


She took a different tack. “How does it work?”  


He merely looked over his shoulder at her. If he’d had an eyebrow, surely it would be raised.  


“The stone. How many are there?” She waved a hand around. “Does everyone leave with one? Is there an original and these are all copies? Can they really leave with it or does it always come back here like a trick pigeon?”  


“The Soul stone is whatever it needs to be to the one who seeks it.”  


“Nope,” she was shaking her head before he was finished. “I don’t buy that.” She stood up now and began her own pacing, talking it through, snapping her fingers. “Thanos wouldn’t settle for a copy, a duplicate. There aren’t _two_ Mona Lisas. Replicas, sure, but only one is the original, and he won’t accept less. And I don’t see you hanging out up here collecting souls for cheap glass knockoffs. Is there one per timeline? Sure, I can see that. But eventually, it gets returned, right? There’s a price out there, too.” She waved her hand behind her, down the path, back through the sand and water pools, and beyond. “Eventually, the seeker dies, and the stone comes back here. It’s self-fulfilling. You give up your soul to get the stone, but you’re diminished, because you gave up your soul. So you still die, or fail, or stumble, whatever, out there and when the stars align, _bam_ you’re dead and _wham_ the stone is back here.”______  
She paused, triumphant and a little flushed.  


“Something like that,” the creature admitted.  


Now she sighed and leaned against the stone wall. “Self-fulfilling.” _You give up your soul for the stone, so what’s left to wield it? A shadow of yourself. And that will never last. Every thing comes back to this cliff.___  


“What if a person, a seeker,” she dipped her head in acknowledgment of his term, “doesn’t have a soul?”  


He smiled and it was terrible. “You are wrong, daughter of…Howard. First, you do. Even you. And second, the stone does not need your soul. The stone needs something you love.”  


_Hah. Oh, that.___  


“What you love most in the universe.”  


_Most?___  


“Thanos…didn’t love…Gamora most,” she said, digging deep for the memory, what Thanos said, what Quill said, what Nebula told Toni. “He loved the stone more. If…if he could give her up, he didn’t love her. That’s not love. Love is…love is giving up yourself….”  


The suits. The persona. The fame. The anger. The team. Everything Toni Stark ever gave up, she loved. Okay, alcohol, wild sex, corporate greed. She may have thought she loved them and thought they hurt to give up, but those were easy, those were nothing compared to the things that hurt, really hurt to give up. The things that cost her.  


She wouldn’t give up herself for Natasha. She honestly believed they needed her just as much to win. It wasn’t arrogance, it was reality. Pieces of a puzzle.  


_Things fall apart. The center cannot hold….___  


The creature waited.  


She considered him. He bore a resemblance to some creature from her father’s files, some buried nugget in the released SHIELD files, but all that meant was that evil had been around long before her time, and she was under no illusion it wouldn’t be around long after her time.  


_After.___  


“Would you take a down payment?”  


If his reaction to the soul stone itself had been fear, she was now reading him correctly and had—finally—caught him off guard. “What?” he asked, as if he didn’t know the sounds of the word.  


This was truly Daniel Webster territory now.  


“What if,” she leaned forward, “I give you a down payment on my soul. You take…say, ten percent now, and you get the rest later. Plus the stone, of course.”  


“It doesn’t work that way.”  


“Because it’s not my soul, right, it’s what I love?”  


By way of answer, the creature raised a hand, pointing to the far edge of the cliff. A ghost image appeared. Potts and Morgan. But the setting sun shined through them, and Toni caught herself before running. An illusion. She turned to Skellator to make a crack, but he just gestured again. Her parents. _Already dead, dickface,_ she thought. Another gesture, the team. Steve. Another gesture, a grown woman that Toni didn’t for a second not think was Morgan again. _My external heart,_ she thought. _At last._______  


“I can bring them here,” he said, not kindly, not anything. Almost tempting, like a showman luring her closer. “I can bring them here, and you can choose—”  


“I choose me,” she replied, turning her back on the ghosts he conjured.  


He smiled then, and it was also horrible. “Then you will not get to use the stone.”  


“No, no, you forget. I have the stone. I’m giving you what I love so you bring back Natasha, as she was. Then you get the stone back the old-fashioned way, the long way.”  


“What will give you me?”  


She took a deep breath. “My heart.” 

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Everyone was shouting, Bruce was at the control panel, thunder was rocking the joint, and even Clint was on his feet, but no one was looking at the platform.  
________

_ _ _ _Friday,_ she thought, as she fell to her knees, and even forward onto her hands, gasping and coughing, feeling that awful, familiar crushing, the blood pounding in her ears, in her hands, everywhere as it rushed, as it pushed….  
__ _ _ _

_ _ _ _Friday, Friday._  
__ _ _ _

_ _ _But not so loud that she didn’t hear a similar thud beside her, and she closed her eyes in relief, even as Clint shouted “Natasha!”  
_ _ _

_ _ _She’d had Skellator send her to New Jersey and she grabbed all the Pym particles but one. Let Scott explain it to Hank 50 years later.  
_ _ _

_ _ _ _Friday._  
__ _ _ _

_ _ _Hands were pulling them up, jostling them, fumbling for their helmets.  
_ _ _

_ _ _ _“Toni! What did--!”_  
__ _ _ _

_ _ _“Friday….”  
_ _ _

_ _ _The helmet was off and she was gasping, feeling the short breaths, vision dimming around the edges…  
_ _ _

_ _ _And the beautiful whine of incoming.  
_ _ _

_ _ _She had just enough strength to push off Steve, to stumble to the edge of the platform, tearing down the quantum suit, baring her chest through the nano shirt, glistening with blood, scars in harsh relief under the lab lights, the cords of the socket just dangling obscenely, the whole cavity looking ripped, violated, voices behind her gasping, shouting, crying out, as Friday slammed the new reactor into her chest and Toni felt every single cell in her body cry out and connect and reconnect and align. She saw her parents, her family, her friends, her team, and the goddamn sun shine. She was alive and recharged and it didn’t own her, she owned it.  
_ _ _

_ _ _With a deep, but shaky breath, she turned around. Scott’s immediate reaction of covering his eyes reminded her to pull the nano suit back together.  
_ _ _

____“Toni,”_ Steve’s voice was raw with emotion, _“what did you do?”________

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _When she’d left the lake house a week ago—_only?_—Potts had stocked her full of new nano pads. He’d also gently inserted a new reactor into the chamber she’d built eight years earlier. A crushing shield in Siberia had shown her that she could cover it up all she wanted, with a rebuilt sternum and artificial Cho skin, but the arc reactor had been in there for long enough to make a space for itself, a space that never went away. Her first thought—when she realized she wasn’t dead—was that it could’ve been cracked, if she had it. And her second thought was that if she’d had it, she wouldn’t be laying in the snow, awaiting rescue or death.  
_________________________________________________

_ _ _So she went home and put it back in.  
_ _ _

_ _ _She felt better with its weight. It wasn’t needed to keep the shrapnel away, or to keep her alive, but her body had adjusted to the badassium, and having it back—even if it violated the fucking Accords—made her breathe easier. Potts had understood the suits, if not the addiction. She’d called him from a hospital bed in Glasgow, and if he thought she was lying to get him back, when he saw her, saw what was needed, he held her hand through the whole procedure. Its presence was more than comforting, her body was just better with it. She was better with it.  
_ _ _

_ _ _It wasn’t needed, it was wanted.  
_ _ _

___It was her choice.___

__ __ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _She stepped over to Steve, breathing easier and standing straighter. Natasha was on the couch, sandwiched between a crying Clint and a crying Bruce. But Toni’s eyes were on Steve’s. He looked appalled, he looked worried.  
_______________________________________________________

_ _ _She took his hand in hers and put the Reality stone and the Soul stone in his palm.  
_ _ _

___“Like you said, we do this together.”_ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> The math is bad, and the logic worse, but it lodged in my head yesterday fully formed and I had to let it out or go mad(der.)
> 
> I've been working on an Avengers AU with a female Toni for years, because why not, but since Endgame a few snippets have popped up that demanded to be written. I wrote to get them out of the way, and here, because Natasha deserved better.
> 
> Also, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was a formative read in my seventh grade lit class. Read the Gutenberg here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602901h.html
> 
> Watch the Charlie Daniels Band play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBjPAqmnvGA


End file.
